Okay, so my business partners (Matt Blancarte and Nate Whitehill) and I have been slackin (especially me) on writing on our personal blogs. Why you may ask?

Well, the combination of starting Unique Blog Designs, and trying to grow the company has a been a great challenge to say the least. Also, when your life is completely wrapped up in your small business (12+ hours a day, 7 days a week), what is there to talk about on our personal blogs (LOL)?

Okay, okay… you are probably saying that coming from someone who runs a blogging company, not finding the time to blog on his personal blog is a LAME excuse… YOU’RE CORRECT!

In the coming months, we are launching some exciting new services and products from UBD and I want to make sure you can find out about what is going on inside UBD, and give you some insight into the day to day of what we are doing to market our company and what I research and learn on a daily basis.

My blog, Matt’s blog and Nate’s blog are going to be taking on the responsibility of trying to reach out to people and give back to the blogosphere valuable and useful information previously not shared.

So please keep the faith and look out for the re-launch of our blogs and for updates on what we are launching in order to reach more people.

For those who haven’t heard, the car manufacturing conglomerate General Motors is now using blogging as a way to connect to different market segments.

Thats right, GM is blogging.
Make your way over to GMnext.com, you will find articles written by executives, proper use of podcasts and other forms of new media. To me, this cements the value in using blogs as a way to market your business, small or large.Late last night (or early this mourning at 2am) Nate, Matt, and I were discussing different markets and how they could use blogs and in what way. We all agree that small to medium sized businesses are among those who could benefit the most from blogging.

Why?
All small businesses need a website (at least in my opinion ) The only problem is most small businesses are working with a relatively small budget. Well, as most of you know, to get a decent website designed these days costs at least $5,000 big ones.A blog can be a far less expensive alternative that benefits from higher search engine rankings in most cases. Also, because a blog is based on some sort of content management system, preferably Wordpress, a blog can be easier to update and modify.Having a great design and useful content on your blog can also convey trust and can encourage visitors to become evangelists for you and your brand.

So What Now?
In the coming years it is likely that more and more of the population will understand how valuable a blog actually can be; a powerful marketing and branding tool, a way to develop a community around your brand, a highly search engine optimized web site, relatively inexpensive, and of course they are easy to update and modify.Seeing the companies with big market research budgets do it first, is just one of the first “clues” blogging is here to stay.

I was reading about the beating the markets took today and I ran across this awesome tool on cnn.com.  

 http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/millionaire/millionaire.html  

I have mentioned these sorts of financial tools often on my blog and so I thought it was good and time to give you guys a link.
Take a look and see when you will be a Millionaire. Enjoy!

As I am sure most of you did, I came across the Mark Zuckerberg on 60 minutes interview yesterday on Techcrunch and watched with some admiration.

Sure Zuck is not the polished CEO of Goldman, nor does he have the experience of Buffet, but he at least deserves some respect, right? I mean the guy is 23 and is one of the founders of a company valued by Microsoft at $15 billion. Thats on par with Ford Motor Company. Simply incredible, in my opinion.

In this interview on 60 Minutes, he answers a couple of tough questions, one in particular regarding Beacon, Facebook’s latest monetization attempt. He states that this type of advertising, featuring one of your Facebook friends as the endorser of the product, is actually “less commercial” than a banner add from Bloomingdales. Some of the commentators on Techcrunch were less than understanding of big Zuck.

One of the contributers to the interview was a lady who is a columnist to a blog I refuse to link, but she called Mark a “toddler CEO.” I find this statement hilarious, arrogant, and right on! The fact that she had the audacity to call Mark Zuckerberg out, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time, is completely arrogant. She a columnist, he’s a billionaire… She’s going through menopause, he just went through puberty… Hmm, just a little arrogant? I think so.

With that being said, Mark does inherently lack experience being a CEO, did I mention he’s 23!!? I think it is perfectly understandable that he makes mistakes running a $15 Billion dollar company with 400 employees. While the “toddler CEO” statement is a little arrogant and derogatory, it does have some validity.

Mark has a lot to learn, but I think we (us non-CEO tycoons) have even more to learn from him! Even though Mr. Gates has valued the company at $15,000,000,000; the big Zuck has yet to develop an awesome monetization strategy while keeping all of his users happy.

One of the things Mark didn’t do, which surprised me, is sell Facebook to Yahoo! for $1 billion. The story goes that Mark actually initially accepted the offer from Yahoo! however, their CEO, reneged and offered only (haha) $800 million. Mark turned this offer down and then when Yahoo! came back a second time and returned to $1 billion, Zuckerberg convinced his board that it was a bad idea and Yahoo! was not serious about the acquisition, but rather more so in wasting their time.

If you haven’t checked out the interview make sure you do HERE!

Has anyone ever told you that you’re not good enough? Most likely the answer is YES.

So are you good enough? YES!

You can do anything that you put your mind to. If that is true, then why are there so many people who seem to drift through life aimlessly? In contrast, there are people who seem to get opportunities handed to them on a silver platter.

This is a question I often ask myself. In my experience it is mostly attitude that separates the two types of people. Some people get discouraged when others tell them that they can’t do something. Yet, the other people set out to prove that they indeed can do whatever they set out to do.

One other thing…

Those that set out to prove that they can do anything believe whole heartedly in themselves. In their mind there is little doubt of ability.

The ones that are drowned by their own sorrows, lack self confidence. They actually believe the people that say, “You can’t do that, you’re nobody.”

Never, ever, ever, listen to those people! Those are the same people who think that they can’t do it either.

Some people are gonna think you’re crazy!

The fact is that most people don’t live out their dream, they probably never even try. Why is that?! I want to know at what point and time do people stop reaching for the stars and go work at a job they hate for 40 years. At what stage in life do we give in to the criticism and lose the drive to be or do whatever we want, not what everyone else tells us we should be?

What are your opinions? Why do people stop dreaming? I have my own opinions but I would like to know your thoughts on the subject!